Haze is found in many shots ranging from portraits, to vintage, to fashion... I have only seen expensive actions packages for Photoshop so far that offer the ability to do it in post, and everyone else is pretty tight about sharing their post processing techniques. Is there any way to add a haze effect in post processing on the cheap?

4 Answers
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This is a JPEG straight out of camera (resized and sharpened). To get such haze, light source (in this case, sun) was positioned so it was just off the edge - so the haze is just a result of light falling into lens.

It depends on what you mean by "haze". You will get something one might call "haze" by using a very soft lens, including possibly a zone plate (which uses diffraction rather than refractive glass lenses). Shooting directly into bright light, particularly with older lenses, will produce a "veiled", low-constrast look which could also by thought of as hazy.

Or, you could approximate a similar effect in post-processing. As Stan Rogers rightly says about my demonstration there, I didn't make the effect very strong. If you take the same steps and turn the dials up to 11, so to speak, you will get a more dramatic effect.

This will give you a haze or glow effect. If you want a real vintage effect you might desaturate the final image a bit more. Don't know if this is the effect you're after, but hopefully it's a good starting point.

I think a lot of fashion photographers use old vintage lenses that produce a lot of flare, reducing contrast and desaturating the image a bit.